Important:
Please note this article is included for interest only,
it is not suitable for serious study as precise accuracy
cannot be guaranteed. Please keep in mind that
information included on this website has been researched
to the best of my ability and any misinformation is
quite by accident but is of course possible.

Not all the links or
ideas and philosophies discussed within this
section necessarily reflect our views.

Please note that the links to a
website called "Animal Rights a
History" do not lead to the original website to which I
have referenced quite extensively. It is a vegan website
with the same name though definitely not the same
website. The links will be removed as soon as possible.

For ease of reading quotations appear in a purple font.

Animal
Rights History

So many gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind,
While just the art of being kind
Is all the sad world needs.

I am the voice of the voiceless;
Through me the dumb shall speak,
Till the deaf world's ear be made to hear
The wrongs of the wordless weak.
From street, from cage and from kennel,
From stable and zoo, the wail
Of my tortured kin proclaim the sin
Of the mighty against the frail.

Oh shame on the mothers of mortals,
Who have not stooped to teach
Of the sorrow that lies in dear, dumb eyes,
The sorrow that has no speech.
The same force formed the sparrow
That fashioned man the king;
The God of the whole gave a spark of soul
To furred and feathered thing.

And I am my brother's keeper
And I will fight his fight,
And speak the word for beast and bird,
Till the world shall set things right.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox 1850-1919

What
follows is by no means an exhaustive history but
rather highlights of some of the main events and
persons in the modern animal rights movement and the
influence of early history that paved the way to our
modern conception of animal rights, an ideology
which has evolved continuously over the course of
history.

A lot of
the the focus during the previous two centuries concerning the history of
animal rights centres upon the UK which appears to
have taken some lead in the progression of animal
rights, however international highlights will be
included as far as is possible. This is a vast
subject and it would not be practical to include
information of a too comprehensive nature. If you
require more detailed information I have included
links at the end of this webpage.

It is
interesting to observe that cave paintings dating
15,000-30,000 years ago rarely show animals
being hunted or eaten. Prehistoric man it appears
may have revered animals for their many attributes
not possessed by man. The idea of the cave man as
the hunter is not supported by these ancient
artistic depictions.

Cave paintings…are almost entirely of animals and
the artists rarely portrayed the animals as being
hunted or eaten.
Richard Ryder, Animal Revolution "The Ancient World

The beginnings of a change in attitude by human beings towards their fellow creatures with
whom they share the earth began with man's
domestication of animals some eight thousand years
ago.

According to
anthropologists, around 8 to 10 thousand years ago,
in what is today Iraq, people for the first time
began the practice of herding -- owning and
confining animals for food – first it was wild sheep
and goats, and around 2,000 years later, cows, and
eventually other animals. This was, I believe, the
last major revolution that our culture experienced,
and it changed our culture, and us who are born into
this culture, in a fundamental way. For the first
time, beings were reduced to mere property
commodities, rather than being mysterious,
autonomous, and respected cohabitants of the Earth
with us. This changed the essential orientation of
the culture, and a wealthy elite emerged that owned
livestock as their wealth, the first large-scale
wars evolved, and indeed, the first word for war
that we know of is the old Sanskrit word “gavyaa,”
which means “the desire for more cattle.” Capitalism
(from the Latin “capita,” meaning “head” as in head
of cattle and sheep) emerged with warfare as
profitable for the wealthy livestock-owning elite,
along with the ownership of humans as slaves—often
people vanquished in war—and the systematic
reduction in the status of women, who by the arrival
of the historic period, roughly

three thousand years ago, were bought and sold as
chattel property. The reduction of wild animals to
the status of pests because they could threaten the
herders’ capital, and the development of science as
a method of dominating animals and nature followed,
as did the arising of a new and different role model
for boys of the macho male herder, tough,
disconnected, and capable of extreme violence and
cruelty toward both animals and rival herders. This
bellicose culture spread gradually and relentlessly
throughout the eastern Mediterranean, eventually to
Europe, and to the Americas and is still spreading,
and we are born into this culture, which has the
same basic attitudes, behaviors and practices to
this day.

Shortly after the beginning of the historic period,
roughly 2,500 years ago, we have the first cases of
prominent and respected people urging compassion to
animals and what we would call today veganism.

The
struggle against animal cruelty, the promotion of
animal rights and the welfare of animals has taken
place to some degree throughout the course of history, below are some of the
advocates involved, their actions and words. Some
are well known, others less so. Of course animal
rights as a concept was not known in times past and
many of those who have been influential in the
progression towards this ideology may have only
supported a limited change in the way animals are
perceived and treated. Others may have had only an
unintentional influence on the way we treat animals,
but the people below most certainly have had an
influence on the progressive rise of animal rights.

Lets begin with the influencing effects of religion
upon animal rights. After which I have included
people of note in a timeline beginning with the
ancient world to the present day.

Click on the links after each time period to access more detailed
information concerning some of the advocates of the
ethical treatments of animals.

If you wish to go straight to a particular
time period click the appropriate link below:

Concern
over animal suffering and adopting a vegetarian or
vegan lifestyle is by no means a modern idea.
Ancient Buddhist, Hindu and Jain scriptures advocate
the ethics of a vegetarian/vegan diet.

An
important belief of the aforementioned religions,
all of which originated In India, is the ideal of
Ahimsa
a Sanskrit term meaning to do no harm, no
violence. Ahimsa is a rule of conduct that
prohibits the killing or injuring of all living
beings. It is closely connected with the idea that
all kinds of violence bring about negative karmic
consequences.

Therefore actions which result in the taking of life,
directly or indirectly, contradict this basic belief.
Ahimsa of course continues today as a fundamental belief
of the above religions, in particular Jainism.

It could be said that these religions, based on
the ethics of ahimsa were the first advocates of
animal rights.

Although some religions may not have an animal rights
position as such most religious traditions have some
basis for mercy or compassion concerning animals
within their ethical teachings to varying degrees, along with an
admonition to relieve suffering, which may have had
an influence on the way we treat animals.

The ethical treatment of animals has featured also in
Islam
and
Judaism but less directly In
Christianity except in the lives, writings and
teachings of saints and other prominent figures
throughout history, some of whom are included later on in
the time line below.

"Slaughter
and meat-eating are the most terrible of sins,
indeed for him animal slaughter is murder and
meat-eating is cannibalism
Empedocles - Greek pre-Socratic philosopher
"Fragments: On Purifications".

How
we should treat animals and our relationship towards
them has been long debated amongst philosophers and
ethicists.

Many of
the ideas about animal rights can be traced back to
the ancient world and Pythagoras may be considered
as the first documented Greek philosopher who spoke
out about the ethical treatment of animals. He
taught that animals should be respected; he
opposed the eating of meat and the killing of
animals in sacrifices. Pythagoras believed all
beings were kin and that after death souls
transmigrated into another body, including a
transmigration between man and animals. Therefore to
kill an animal may be tantamount to killing an
ancestor.

In his
biography the Life of
Pythagoras, Porphyry writes

...the
following is a matter of general information. He
taught that the soul was immortal and that after
death it transmigrated into other animated bodies.
After certain specified periods, the same events
occur again; that nothing was entirely new; that all
animated beings were kin, and should be considered
as belonging to one great family. Pythagoras was the
first one to introduce these teachings into Greece.

Ovid, Pythagoras's Teachings: Vegetarianism"Human
beings, stop desecrating your bodies with impious
foodstuffs. There are crops; there are apples
weighing down the branches; and ripening grapes on
the vines; there are flavoursome herbs; and those
that can be rendered mild and gentle over the
flames; and you do not lack flowing milk; or honey
fragrant from the flowering thyme. The earth,
prodigal of its wealth, supplies you with gentle
sustenance, and offers you food without killing or
shedding blood."

Saint Clement of Alexandria, born 150 AD was a Greek
Christian theologian and was thought to be the most
educated and philosophical of all the Christian fathers
said :

"It is far better to be happy than to have your
bodies act as graveyards for animals. Accordingly, the
apostle Matthew partook of seeds, nuts and vegetables,
without flesh".

"The unnatural eating of flesh meats is as polluting
as the heathen worship of devils, with its sacrifices
and its impure feasts, through participation in it a man
becomes a fellow eater with devils". Sacrifices were invented by men to be a pretext for
eating flesh.

King Ashoka of India ca 273-232 BCE taught his people to
have compassion for animals and to refrain from harming
or killing them. In
one of his famous pillar edits he declares:

"The greatest progress of Righteousness among men comes
from the exhortation in favour of non-injury to life and
abstention from killing living beings."

Non human animals were included with humans as
beneficiaries of his programs for obtaining
medicinal plants, planting trees and digging wells.
In his fifth pillar edit King Ashoka decreed
protection for young animals and mothers still
feeding their young from slaughter, prohibited
forests from being burned to protect the creatures
living in them along with the banning of a number of
hunting practices harmful to animals. He decreed that certain days
were "non-killing days," and on these days fish
could not be caught, nor any
other animals killed.
He established wells and watering holes, places of
rest and hospitals for humans and animals alike.

Click the
links to read more about the following proponents of
animal rights, the ethical treatment of non human
animals and advocates of a vegetarian or vegan diet
from the ancient world.

This was the subject of a huge debate among
philosophers. Already in the 6th and 5th cents.
bc
Pythagoras and
Empedocles had attacked the
killing or maltreatment of animals, partly on
the grounds that
transmigration made us literally akin
to them. But vegetarianism was made difficult by
the interconnections between religious sacrifice
and meat‐eating. Justice was treated as a gift
of God to benefit humans, not animals, both by
Hesiod and in the myth ascribed to
Protagoras in
Plato's
Protagoras.

The decisive step was taken
by
Aristotle, who denied reason
and belief to animals. Compensatingly, he
allowed them a rich perceptual life, which he
carefully disentangled from reliance on reason
or belief. In ethics, he surprisingly combined
the view that animals can be praised and blamed
for their voluntary acts with the view that we
owe them no justice, because we have nothing in
common, and can conduct a just war against them.
Aristotle's successor
Theophrastus, disagreed. We
are, in an extended sense, akin even in
reasonings, and killing harmless animals is
unjust.

The Epicureans and Stoics (see
Epicurus;
stoicism) sided with Aristotle in
denying reason to animals, and hence justice.
Only
Plutarch was to ask ‘why not
kindness, if not justice?’ The Epicurean
rationale is that justice is owed only where
there is a contract, hence only among rational
agents. The Stoics denied that animals, as
non‐rational, could be treated as belonging (oikeiōsis:
lit. a welcoming into the household)—and that
despite the prevalence of
pets. Hence justice could not be
extended to them. Unlike Aristotle, they denied
animals memory, emotion, foresight, intention,
and voluntary acts.

From then on, the philosophical debate turned
on animal rationality. Animal pain and terror
were seldom cited before
Porphyry. Pythagoras and
Apuleius exploited them only
in the case of humans transformed into animals.
Outside philosophy, attitudes were sometimes
broader. The Athenians punished a man for
flaying a ram alive. When
Pompey staged a slaughter of
elephants, the public was more
concerned for the terrified elephants, the Stoic
Seneca the Younger for the
loss of human life. The philosophers' praise of
animals is sometimes only to downgrade humans (Cynics)
or glorify the Creator (Augustine),
while vegetarianism was often based merely on
ascetic or medical grounds.

The chief defenders of animals, in response
to the Stoics, were the Neopythagoreans and
certain Platonists. By far the most important
work is Porphyry'sOn Abstinence from Animal Food.
Of its four books, the first records the case
against animals, but forbids meat on ascetic
grounds; the second rejects animal sacrifice;
the third claims rationality and justice for
animals; the fourth is an anthropology of
vegetarian nations. But Porphyry's probable
pupil
Iamblichus felt it necessary
to reinstate sacrifice. To defend this, he
reinterpreted the belief of Pythagoras and that
of Plato in transmigration of human souls into
animals, the first belief as excluding
sacrificial animals the second as metaphorical.
He denied a rational soul to animals. The
western Christian tradition was fatefully
influenced by Augustine, who ignored the
pro‐animal side of this debate and backed the
Stoic ground for killing animals.
See also
animals, knowledge of;
animals in cult;
hunting;
pets;
sacrifice, greek and
roman;
semonides; and particular animals (camels;
dogs;
elephants;
horses).

If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures
from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have
men who deal likewise with their fellow men.

All
creatures have the same source as we have. Like us, they
derive the life of thought, love, and will from the
Creator. Not to hurt our humble brethren is our first
duty to them; but to stop there is a complete
misapprehension of the intentions of Providence. We have
a higher mission. God wishes that we should succour them
whenever they require it.
St Francis

During
this time period in England a number of prohibitions
were
introduced
against such pass-times as Bear-Baiting,
Bull-Baiting, Cock-Fighting, Fishing, Fowling,
Hawking, Horse-Racing and Hunting.*1) Although these
various enactments were not directly implemented to
prevent cruelty to animals, and in some cases were
of limited duration, nonetheless these acts -
letters, bills and so forth - had a positive
effect on the treatment of animals. Eventually some
prohibitions were made permanent by acts of
parliament.

However
most of the
influence in the middle ages concerning the ethical
treatment of animals, which may have had a positive
effect on our progression towards the modern ideology
of animal rights, came mostly from those of a
religious persuasion such as those mentioned below.

The patron saint of Wales, St David was a
6th century church official. A native of
Wales he founded twelve monastic
settlements in Wales, (David's Cathedral
now stands on the site of the monastery
he founded in the remote and
inhospitable valley of 'Glyn Rhosyn' in
Pembrokeshire) Cornwall and Brittany and
was renowned as a teacher and preacher.
He lived a simple ascetic lifestyle, and
encouraged his followers to do likewise,
and to abstain from eating meat and
drinking beer. He is also considered the patron saint of
vegetarians probably because of his
monastic code of conduct called the
rule of Saint David that monks had to
pull the plough themselves, drink water
only and to abstain from eating meat and
instead to eat only bread with salt and
herbs.

Perhaps the person of most note
concerning the advocacy of ethical
treatment towards animals and the
evolution of the concept of animal
rights and the welfare of animals is
Saint Francis. St Francis the patron
Saint of animals is remembered for his
compassion towards animals and it was
said that animals, most particularly a
lamb, followed him everywhere. Animals
where drawn to him and it is said that
his donkey cried when on his deathbed
the dying saint thanked him for carrying
him around throughout this life. For
Saint Francis all creatures were equals
not subjects to be
dominated, exploited or abused. Saint Francis is
considered as a true steward, a caretaker of God's
precious creation, a brother to the animals, all
animals without discrimination. You can read more
about St Francis by clicking the link
further down.

Another
Christian saint of note for his love and compassion for
animals was Saint Martín de Porres.

Born in 1579 at Lima, Peru, he worked on
behalf of the poor establishing an orphanage
and a children's hospital. St. Martin's love
and compassion though encompassed all
creatures including animals that many refer
to as vermin. It is said that he had a
mystical bond with animals. Attributed to
him are many miracles including an ability
to communicate with all creatures. At the home of his sister he maintained a
hospital for cats and dogs, he saw no difference between
animals and man and had a deep compassion for both. He
treated them with herbs, performed what surgery he could
when necessary and prayed for their well-being. He
never passed by any suffering animal who needed his care.
For St Martín de Porres all living
beings were sacred

and he loved and ministered to each without
discrimination. Like St Francis animals appeared
drawn to him by the radiance of his love and he
was seen walking through the streets with a following of
animals.

Similar to
the previous time period a number of indirect
prohibitions were introduced that benefited animals.
Often these earlier enactments are referenced when
newer legislation preventing these and other acts of
cruelty towards animals were introduced.

The first
legislation directly against animal cruelty in the
English speaking world was a bill passed in Ireland
in 1635 that prohibited the unimaginable cruelty of
pulling wool off sheep and attaching ploughs to
horses tails. This bill was the first known animal
rights law in history

A little
later In North
America in 1641 the first legal code to protect
domestic animals in North America was passed by the
Massachusetts Bay Colony which stated that: No man
shall exercise any Tirranny or Crueltie towards any
bruite Creature which are usuallie kept for man’s
use.

In 1654
Oliver Cromwell who disliked blood sports such as
cockfighting, dog fighting, bull baiting and bull
running passed a law which prohibited these
acts of cruelty. However in 1659 this law was overturned.

During the eighteenth century Europe saw
some of the most shocking and unimaginable
cruelty towards animals including the
introduction of Bull fighting. It was during
the age of enlightenment, as slavery was
being challenged, that a comparison between human
and animal slavery was being drawn which
signalled the beginnings of what may more
easily be recognised as the emergence of
animal rights. Campaigners for the abolition
of slavery and other social injustices
including Richard Martin, William
Wilberforce and Lord Shaftesbury were also
active in the cause of animals. It was
during this period that an increase in
awareness came about concerning the need for
the humane treatment of animals and the
recognition of sentience along with the
passing of numerous laws. In addition,
recourse to a vegetarian diet becomes more
prolific. More legislation was introduced
against cruel acts to animals.
For example:

Penalty of death, or to avoid death,
transportation beyond the seas, to any of
his Majesty's plantations…for any persons
who shall in the night-time maliciously,
unlawfully, and willingly burn or destroy
any stacks of corn, hay, or grain, barns, or
other houses or buildings, kill, or destroy
any horses, sheep or other cattle.
Prescribed treble damages for any persons
who "unlawfully, and willingly maim, wound,
or otherwise hurt any horses, sheep, or
other cattle…or destroy any plantations of
trees.

Among the emerging advocates of animals
welfare/rights was William Hogarth, credited
for the first graphic sequential art which
led to present day comics, who used his
artistic talent to make a statement
concerning the effects of animal cruelly,
not only on the unfortunate animals but also
to the perpetrator. A concept that is as applicable today as it was than. This
work called The Four Stages of Cruelty, a
series of four printed engravings, depicts
the cruel treatment of animals, which he saw
with alarming frequency, and what is likely
to happen to those who behave in this way.

Hogarth was disturbed by the scenes of
cruelty on the streets of London, and
his intention was to correct "that
barbarous treatment of animals,
the very sight of which renders the streets
of our metropolis so distressing to every
feeling mind",
and his renditions, printed on cheap paper
were intended as a form of moral
instruction.

The Four Stages of
Cruelty was issued as a warning against
immoral behaviour, showing the easy path
from childish thug to convicted criminal.

First stage of cruelty: Shows the torture of
various animals. The focus of the sequence
is Tom Nero featured in the centre of
the plate, assisted by other boys he is
shown to insert an arrow into a dog's
rectum.

To view a larger size click on the
graphic

Second Stage of cruelty: In the second
sequence Nero as an adult who is now a coach
driver, is shown ill-treating his horse
causing the horse to break his leg. Other
acts of cruelty take place in the background
including the crushing of a boy playing by a
dray as a result of neglect by a drayman who
is oblivious to the injury he has caused.

To view a larger size click on the
graphic

Cruelty in perfection: The third stage shows
Nero with his victim a women lying on the
ground. Now Nero has progressed from animal
cruelty to theft and a particularly brutal
murder.

To view a larger size click on the
graphic

Reward of Cruelty: In the final sequence
Nero is how being dissected after his
execution by scientists; this was in keeping
with an act of parliament which allowed for
those convicted of murder to be dissected.
With this final depiction Hogarth warns of
the inevitable outcome for those who start down
the path of cruelty, beginning with cruelty
to animals. Today this sequence is
recognised and people who have abused
animals in childhood go on to kill humans
beings.

John Oswald 1760/1730 - 1793 a Scottish
philosopher, writer, poet, social critic and
revolutionary argued that modern society was in
conflict with man's nature. Oswald stated in The
Cry of Nature or an Appeal to Mercy and Justice
on Behalf of the Persecuted Animals, that man is
naturally equipped with feelings of mercy and
compassion. If each man had to personally
experience the death of the animals he ate, a vegetarian diet would be far
more common. The division of labour, however,
allows modern man to eat flesh without
experiencing the prompting of man's natural
sensitivities, while the brutalization of modern
man hardened him to these sensitivities.
Oswald was a vegetarian and gave compassion a
central place in his philosophy.

The nineteenth century saw a dramatic
increase in social reforms as the educated
became more concerned about attitudes
towards and treatment of, the poor, the old,
children, and the insane. This concern was
extended to
non-human animals.

During this time more significant progress
was made concerning animal rights.

Legislation

From the early 1800s various Acts of
parliament, which were once only introduced
from the perspective of damage to property
rather than animal welfare, were now
introduced to prevent cruelty to animals,
beginning with a bill in 1800 against bull
baiting, than another 1802 by William
Wilberforce, mentioned earlier in the above
section,
than again In 1809, Lord Erskine introduced
a bill to protect cattle and horses from
malicious wounding, wanton cruelty, and
beating.
These bills unfortunately failed to pass
into law.

It
was not until the passing of the Cruel
Treatment of Cattle Act 1822 to Prevent
Cruel and Improper Treatment of Cattle that
it became unlawful to mistreat certain
animals. The bill which was introduced by
Richard Martin would protect sheep, cattle
and horses from abuse and made it an
offence, punishable by fines of up to five
pounds or two months imprisonment, to
"beat, abuse, or ill-treat any horse, mare,
gelding, mule, ass, ox, cow, heifer, steer,
sheep or other cattle."
Any citizen was entitled to bring charges
under the Act.
This act became the world's first major
piece of animal protection legislation.

Most notable of subsequent acts was the
cruelty to Animals Act of 1835, which
was intended to protect animals from
mistreatment. Although the bill did not
extend protection to include wild animals
the 1835 Act amended the existing
legislation of 1822 to include (as 'cattle')
bulls, dogs, bears and sheep and to prohibit
bear-baiting and cockfighting. This
legislation helped to make possible further
legislation to protect animals, create
shelters, veterinary hospitals and more
humane transportation and slaughter.

The animal act of 1835, the result of
lobbying by the RSPCA, the establishment of
which is discussed later, was repealed and
replaced by the Cruelty to Animals Act
1849
with the long title: An Act for the More
Effectual Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,
and reiterated the offences of beating,
ill-treating, over-driving, abusing and
torturing animals with a maximum penalty of
£5 and compensation of up to £10. The Act
was amended and expanded to include
Vivisection and was renamed The Cruelty to
Animals Act 1876. The Cruelty to
Animals Act 1835, expanded to include
Vivisection and was renamed, The Cruelty to
Animals Act 1876. The Act was replaced 110
years later by the Animals (Scientific
Procedures) Act 1986.

Other countries followed suit passing
legislation that protected or favoured
animals including, the courts in New
York which in in 1822, ruled that wanton
cruelty to animals was a misdemeanour at
common law. In France cruelty towards
domestic animals was outlawed in 1850 when
Jacques Philippe Delmas de Grammont was
successful in having the Loi Grammont, an
act outlawing cruelty against domestic
animals, passed. The state of Washington
followed in 1859, New York in 1866,
California in 1868, Florida in 1889.

Animal protection and welfare Organisations

In
the UK The Royal Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) was founded in
1824 by a group of twenty-two reformers
led by Richard Martin MP (who earned the
nickname Humanity Dick), William Wilberforce
MP and the Reverend Arthur Broome in a
London coffee shop. It is the first, the
oldest and largest welfare
organisation in the world. The work of the
RSPCA inspired the emergence of similar
animal protection groups beginning with the
Ulster Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals in Northern Ireland; the Scottish
Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
(Scottish SPCA or SSPCA); Royal Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Australia; the Royal New Zealand Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RNZSPCA);
and the American Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals.

As mentioned above the RSPCA was instrumental concerning the introduction of
a number of legislations including the
aforementioned 1835 Cruelty to Animals Act
and the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act.

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals ASPCA , was
F

ounded
in 1866 by Henry Bergh. It was the first animal
protection group formed in the United States. During
his time as a diplomatic in Russia Bergh had become
disturbed by the cruel treatment of animals there.
After consulting with Earl of
Harrowby, the president of the
RSPCA, he returned to the united states where he
spoke out against cruel practices of bull and
cockfights and horse beating. He created the
"Declaration of the Rights of Animals," and in 1866,
persuaded the New York state legislature to pass
anti-cruelty legislation and to grant the newly
formed ASPCA the authority to enforce it.
aspca.org/about-us/history.html

In 1875
Frances Power Cobbe, writer and social reformer who
published articles and leaflets opposing animal
experiments founded the Society for the Protection
of Animals Liable to Vivisection which later became
the Victoria Street Society (VSS) and then the
National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS), which
continues today. This was the world's first organization
campaigning against animal experiments. A dispute
occurred between Frances Cobbe and Stephen
Coleridge, who was than Honorary secretary,
concerning his proposal that rather than complete
abolition a restriction on vivisection should be
advocated, the success of which he hoped would
eventually lead to total abolition. Coleridge's
argument was that the results of over twenty years
of campaigning for total abolition had made no
progress. Frances Cobbe was outraged and as a
consequence in 1898 she and other older members left
the NAVS and founded the British Union for the
Abolition of Vivisection BUAV, both groups remain
active today.
buav.org/

The American Humane Association AHA was
formed in 1877 when delegates from
twenty-seven humane societies from ten states
joined together in the first forum to unite
their missions and combine their efforts.
The AHA is an organisation dedicated to the
welfare of both animals and children. One of
its first tasks was to end the inhumane
treatment of farm animals.

This time period saw an increase in concern
over wild life, most particularly birds. In
1889 The Royal Society for the protection of
birds was founded by Emily Williamson in her
own home in Didsbury, Manchester. The
charity began as a protest group
campaigning against the use of great crested
grebe and kittiwake skins and feathers in
fur clothing and was originally know as "the
Plumage League". The group gained
popularity and amalgamated with the ‘Fur and
Feather League’ eventually becoming the RSPB
the charity continues its work todayrspb.org.uk/

Originally the membership consisted entirely
of women who campaigned against the fashion
of the time for women to wear exotic
feathers in their hats. There had previously
been some concern about the destruction of
native birds such as great crested
grebes and kittiwakes which lead to
legislation called the Sea
Birds Preservation Act of 1869 and the Wild
Birds Protection Act of 1880. It was the
continued wearing of increasingly more exotic
plumes that lead to the founding of the
society.

Also during the Victorian era children's
societies were founded for the purpose of
educating children about wildlife and
teaching them to be kind to wild
creatures. This
was of concern to the newly formed RSPCA
which produced a large amount of literature
on the matter. Two societies, the Band of
Mercy and the Dickie Bird society, were
formed which recruited children and required
them to take the pledge to be kind to birds
and other animals. The Band of Mercy which
came under the remit of the RSPCA was formed
in 1875. The Dickie Bird Society was founded
in 1876 by William Adams the editor of the
Newcastle weekly Chronicle. Members were
also recruited internationally and all
members were
required to take the Following Pledge:

I
hereby promise to be kind to all living
this, to protect them to the utmost of my
power, to feed the birds in the winter time,
and never to take or destroy a nest. I also
promise to get as many boys and girls as
possible to join the Dicky Bird Society
*4

In England in 1893 Henry Salt,
about whom you can read more by
clicking the link further down, formed
the Humanitarian league, the aims
of which were to promote the
principle that it was immoral to
inflict suffering on any
sentient creature. The League
opposed both capital and
corporal punishment and sought
to ban hunting as a sport and
strongly opposed vivisection.
Included amongst its supporters
were Keir Hardie, Thomas Hardy,
George Bernard Shaw, Bertram
Lloyd and Christabel Pankhurst

Vegetarian Societies

“It is necessary to correct the error that
vegetarianism has made us weak in mind, or passive
or inert in action. I do not regard flesh-food as
necessary at any stage”
Mahatma Gandhi

A mention
should be made concerning the rise of societies
promoting vegetarianism. Although perhaps less
involved in more direct work towards the cause of
animal rights or animal welfare such organisations
played a role and continue to play an ever
increasingly important role in promoting alternative meat free
life styles, which would of course have an effect on
the progress towards the cessation of the use of
animals for food, clothing and other commodities.

This time
period saw the emergence of perhaps the oldest organised society in the world promoting
vegetarianism: The vegetarian society. The first
recorded meeting of the Vegetarian Society was held
at Northwood Villa, a vegetarian hospital in
Ramsgate, Kent in 1847. Its first full public
meeting was held in Manchester the following year.
The societies first issue of its magazine, The
Vegetarian, was published in 1848. The aim of the
vegetarian society is the
promotion, understanding and respect for
vegetarian lifestyles.

One of its
most influential members was
Mahatma Gandhi the pre-eminent political and
spiritual leader during the Indian independence
movement. Gandhi is perhaps most famous for his non
violent protests against British rule In India.
Gandhi though is considered by many as more of a
philosopher than a statesmen. Often overlooked
however is that Gandhi's commitment to peace also
included non human animals and Gandhi was one of this
eras great advocates of vegetarianism, during his
time in London he joined and was a member of
the executive committee of the vegetarian society.
Another member of note was George Bernard Shaw. The
vegetarian society has continued into the twenty-first century

Other
vegetarian societies emerged that included
also abstention from alcohol and tobacco, amongst
which in 1875 was the Dietetic Reform Society followed by the
London Food Reform Society in 1877. The latter eventually
dropped the word "London" from its title to become
the the National Food Reform Society before finally
amalgamating with the vegetarian society in 1885
after which it became the London branch of the
Vegetarian Society.

Further
History of the London Vegetarian Society is included
in the International Vegetarian Union's article,
London Vegetarian Society 1888-1969 :
ivu.org/history/vfu/lva.html

More in-depth information concerning some of
the people who influenced the progression of
animal rights during this time period:

There is
nothing to indicate that an animal values its life
any less than a human being values his. Rosalind Godlovitch, Animals, Men and Morals: an
Enquiry into the Maltreatment of Non-humans

The twentieth and twenty first century has seen a
great increase not only in the exploitation of
animals but also in the growth of animal rights,
vegetarianism and veganism.

Such a lot has happened
during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, I
will therefore only include key events and the
persons involved. If you require more comprehensive
information there is a huge amount already available
on the internet, I have included
links to some of the most informative at the end of this
page.

What follows are
highlights concerning the development of animal
rights and animal welfare from the early twentieth
century to the present day:

1900 In Britain the
Wild Animals in Captivity Protection Act 1900 was passed by parliament, as the
name suggests it
was an Act for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
in Captivity. The penalties for infringement
included a prison sentence not exceeding three
months with or without hard labour or a fine not
exceeding five pounds.

1. [Definition of "animal" 12 & 13 Vict. c. 92. 17 &
18 Vict. c. 39.] The word "animal" in this Act means
any bird, beast, fish, or reptile which is not
included in the Cruelty to Animals Acts, 1849 and
1854.r

2. [Cruelty to captive animals.] Any person shall be
guilty of an offence who, whilst an animal is in
captivity or close confinement, or is maimed,
pinioned, or subjected to any appliance or
contrivance for the purpose of hindering or
preventing its escape from such captivity or
confinement, shall, by wantonly or unreasonably
doing or omitting any act,… cause or permit to be
caused any unnecessary suffering to such animal; or
cruelly abuse, infuriate, tease, or terrify it, or
permit it to be so treated

1906 In addition to
highlighting the plight of immigrants to America
Upton Sinclair's book, The Jungle, published in 1906,
exposed the brutal conditions for both animals and
humans in Chicago's slaughter plants. He
likened the slaughterhouse to a dungeon where
horrible crimes were committed,

Founded
in 1908 The International Vegetarian union
IVU is a union of vegetarian societies from around
the world. The IVU succeeded the Vegetarian Federal
Union which was established in 1889. The IVU today
continues to encourage international co-operation
amongst vegetarian societies to promote worldwide
vegetarianism.

1916Stephen
Coleridge a UK author, barrister, opponent of
vivisection and
co-founder of the National Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children wrote,
Vivisection: A heartless science, from which
the following quotations were taken

It is
manifest that the whole question of man’s rights
over and duties towards animals is a moral one which
has no special relation to Science; and therefore
distinguished men of Science have no more
qualification to claim authority to dictate to us
about it than have distinguished musicians,
painters, or lawyers.
Stephen Coleridge, 1854-1936, Vivisection: A
Heartless Science

The
knowledge that horrible mutilations may be daily and
hourly executed upon the bodies of living creatures
with no adequate security for their insensibility,
makes very many humane people profoundly miserable;
it rises day and night between them and their peace
of mind; it haunts their lives waking and asleep; it
deprives them of joy in this world which might
otherwise be theirs.
Vivisection: A Heartless Science

Most
famous of Coleridge's antivivisection activities was
the Brown Dog affair, a controversy which lasted from
1903 until 1910 and centred around vivisection and a
stature erected in memory of a little brown dog who
had been experimented upon and killed for medical
research. This controversy provoked serious riots
the like of which was not seen again in the UK until
the poll tax riot to March 1990

Read more
about Coleridge and the issue of the Brown dog,
a key in the first undercover investigation of
animal experiments by anti-vivisectionists, and the
subject of the 1903 Bayliss-Coleridge libel case -
Dr Bayliss of London University versus the Honorary
Secretary of the National Anti-Vivisection Society.
navs.org.uk/about_us/24/0/286/

On the 1st
November 1944 the Vegan Society was founded
by Donald Watson and Elsie Shrigley despite
opposition from prominent vegetarians. This day is
now celebrated as world vegan day. This was the
world's first society promoting veganism,
although since 1909 the ethics of consuming dairy
products had been debated within vegetarian circles. Veganism is basically the
abstinence from dairy, eggs, honey and the use of any
animal deprived products. However Veganism extends
further than dietary considerations and involves
abstinence from any product of animal origin. The word Vegan, coined by
Donald Watson is derived from the Word VEGetariAN by taking the first three letters (veg)
and the last two letters (an) because, as Donald
Watson explained, "veganism starts with
vegetarianism and carries it through to its logical
conclusion."

In 1948
a similar society was founded in the USA in
California by Dr. Catherine Nimmo and Rubin
Abramowitz. In 1960 this would eventually become
incorporated in into the American Vegan Society
founded by Jay Dinshah.
americanvegan.org/

Other
vegan societies were established throughout the
world including in 1984, a "breakaway" group from
the Vegan Society: the Movement for Compassionate
Living, was founded by former Vegan Society
secretary Kathleen Jannaway to promote sustainable
living and self-sufficiency in addition to veganism.
http://www.mclveganway.org.uk/

Despite the dramatic
increase in animal protection legislation in the nineteenth century, animals still had
no rights as such and existing legislation continued
to be aimed at human interests rather than those of
animals, although animals indirectly received
benefit, for instance outlawing cruelty was more
about protecting property, the animal being the
property of the owner of course. For example laws against pouching were more
to do with protecting the land owners financial
concerns.

With the dramatic rise of
vivisection and the introduction of factory farming
in the middle part of the twenty-first century the
situation for animals deteriorated notwithstanding
the increase in concern over animal welfare during
the previous century. For example the number of
animals used in research grew rapidly :300 in the UK
in 1875, 19,084 in 1903, and 2.8 million in 2005
(50–100 million worldwide), and a modern annual
estimated range of 10 million to upwards of 100
million in the U.S.*3
Though the largest influence
on the increase in animal abuse resulted from the
industrialization of farming,
factory farming, where billions of
animals are bred and slaughtered for food on a scale
not possible before World War Two.

However groups of
concerned people arose to counteract the appalling
increase in animal exploitation. One of these was
the Oxford group, formed in the 1960s by a group of
intellectuals who viewed the use of animals as
unacceptable exploitation. Psychologist

Richard D. Ryder,
who was to become an influential proponent in the
cause of animal rights
was a member of the Oxford Group. Ryder coined the
term "speciesism" in a
privately printed pamphlet to describe the
assignment of value to the interests of beings on
the basis of their membership of a particular
species. The term speciesism became
the basis of the animal rights movement and in 1989
became an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Ryder considered Speciesism as on a par with racism
and wrote extensively on the issue.
"I use the word 'speciesism',"
Ryder wrote in 1975, "to
describe the widespread discrimination that is
practised by man against other species ...
Speciesism is racism, and both overlook or
underestimate the similarities between the
discriminator and those discriminated against."

In 1964

Ruth Harrison
published her seminal book Animal Machines, a
critique of factory farming which describes
intensive poultry and livestock farming. The
book exposed the whole reality of
intensive farming and revealed the suffering
inflicted on animals as a consequence.

Britain's
first farm animal welfare legislation, the 1968
Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act and also
the European Convention for the Protection of
Animals Kept for Farming Purposes was motivated by
her descriptions of factory
farming
methods such as battery hens, veal crates and tether
stalls for sows.
In 1986 she was awarded an OBE.In 1965 an article "The
rights of Animals" by novelist Brigid Brophy was
published by the Sunday Times. It was this article
that encouraged Richard Ryder's own interest, in his
subsequent book "Animal Revolution: Changing
Attitudes Towards Speciesism" he writes that it was
the first time a major newspaper had devoted so much
space to the issue. Robert Garner, author of a
number of books on the subject of animal rights and
professor of political theory at the University of
Leicester specialising in animal rights, writes
that Ruth Harrison's and Brigid Brophy's articles
led to an explosion of interest in the relationship
between humans and non-humans, or what Garner calls
the
"new morality".

The relationship of homo sapiens to the other
animals is one of unremitting exploitation. We
employ their work; we eat and wear them. We exploit
them to serve our superstitions: whereas we used to
sacrifice them to our gods and tear out their
entrails in order to foresee the future, we now
sacrifice them to science, and experiment on their
entrail in the hope—or on the mere offchance—that we
might thereby see a little more clearly into the
present ... To us it seems incredible that the Greek
philosophers should have scanned so deeply into
right and wrong and yet never noticed the immorality
of slavery. Perhaps 3000 years from now it will seem
equally incredible that we do not notice the
immorality of our own oppression of animals.

Brigid Brophy, The
Sunday Times, October 10, 1965,

More
quotes from the article : The Rights of Animals

BloodsportsThe bull-fighter who
torments a bull to death and then castrates it of an
ear has neither proved nor
increased his own virility; he has merely
demonstrated that he is a butcher with balletic
tendencies.
Brigid Brophy, ‘The Rights of Animals’, Sunday
Times, 10 October 1965.

Were it announced tomorrow
that anyone who fancied it might, without risk of
reprisals or recriminations, stand at a
fourth-storey window, dangle out of it a length of
string with a meal (labelled ‘Free’) on the end,
wait till a chance passer-by took a bite and then,
having entangled his cheek or gullet on a hook
hidden in the food, haul him up to the fourth floor
and there batter him to death with a knobkerrie, I
do not think there would be many takers.

The following was
originally given as a paper at the RSPCA symposium
held at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1977,and
published in Paterson & Ryder 1979. The extraction
below appears in the Critical Society, Issue 1,
Winter 2009/10

The
Darwinists Dilemma
by Brigid
Brophy

Long, long
ago, in 1965, the Sunday Times invited me to write a
full-page article on a subject of my own choice. I
did so and I gave the article a title, ‘The Rights
of Animals’, which I now see, with pleasure, has
been attached to this symposium.2

For my part, I picked the title by deliberate
analogy with – or, more precisely and more
pointedly, by deliberate extrapolation from – the
title of Thomas Paine’s book (of 1791 and 1792) The
Rights of Man.

In other
words, yes, I was deliberately associating the case
for non-human animals with that clutch of
egalitarian or libertarian ideas which have
sporadically, though quite often with impressively
actual political results, come to the rescue of
other oppressed classes, such as slaves or
homosexuals or women. I implied that the high
barrier we have put up between the human species and
all the rest of the animal species, the barrier to
which Richard Ryder presently gave the very useful
name of ‘speciesism’, was essentially a class
barrier, unjustified by reason and kept in place by
the superstition and self-interest of those who were
on the privileged side of it.

Previously
as a researcher in animal laboratories in both the
UK and the USA Richard Rydar had been disturbed by what he
had witnessed. Consequently in what he refers to as
a
"spontaneous eruption of thought and indignation,"
he
wrote letters to the editor of the Daily telegraph
which were published on on April 7, May 3, and May
20, 1969. Brigid Brophy read them and subsequently
put him in touch with with Oxford philosophers
Stanley and Roslind Godlovitch, and John Harris, who
were working on a book of moral philosophy about the
treatment of animals. Along with Harrison and Brophy
he became a contributor to the influential
Animals, Men and Morals: An Inquiry into the
Maltreatment of Non-humans published 1971 a
collection of essays concerning our treatment of
animals restating the case for animal rights in a
powerful and philosophically sophisticated way. This
work was said to reinvigorate and inspire subsequent
philosophers to develop their ideas. Also of
influence was Rosalind Godlovitch's essay "Animal and
Morals" was published In the same year.

1975 saw the publication of Animal
Liberation by Australian Philosopher
Peter singer which is regarded as the
founding philosophical work of the animal
rights movement.
After a conversation with fellow
Oxford Student and vegetarian Richard
Keshen, Singer came to believe that by
eating animals he was contributing to the
oppression of other species. Singer was
introduced to the Godlovitches by Keshen.
Singers review of the Godlovitches book
The New York Review of Books in 1973
evolved into his first book on animal rights:
Animal Liberation published in 1973 .
Singer based his arguments on the principle
of utilitarianism, the view, broadly
speaking, that an act is right if it leads
to the "greatest happiness of the greatest
number," a phrase first used in 1776 by
Jeremy Bentham. Animal Liberation is a
powerfully influential and
comprehensive account of the conditions in
factory farms and research laboratories and
is a persuasive argument to stop eating
meat. It was whist reviewing the
beforementioned book 'Animals, Men and
Morals' that singer first coined the term
Animal liberation. The publication of animal
liberation precipitated a surge of scholarly
interest in animal rights.

It
is as a result of the infuence of Peter Singer, Richard Rydar
and others mentioned above that there has
been more controversy and discussion about
animal rights in more recent times than the
whole of history. The twenty and
twenty-first centuries have indeed seen an
explosion in animal rights activity and
increases in awareness of animal sentience,
intelligence and other animal related issues

Animal rights, welfare and activist
groups of the previous centuries have
continued to flourish and many more have
been established throughout the world.

In
1975 The Animal liberation front was
formed in the UK

The people who run this country, they have
shares, they have investments in
pharmaceutical companies ... who are
experimenting on animals, so to think that
you can write to these people, and say "we
don't like what you're doing, we want you to
change," and expect them to do so, it's not
going to happen.
Keith Mann, ALF

Shortly after the formation of the Oxford
group other groups of animal rights
proponents and activists came into
being . One such group was an anti-hunting
activist group in Luton in 1971 formed by
Ronnie Lee a law student, this group became
the Band of Mercy, so named after the
19th-century RSPCA youth group mentioned
previously. Referring to their actions as
"active compassion." the group broke windows
and slashed the tires of the vehicles of
humter's. The band of Mercy
engaged in the first arson attack on
November 1973 when they set fire to a
Hoechst Pharmaceuticals research laboratory
near Milton Keynes. The group claimed
responsibility identifying themselves to the
press as a: "nonviolent guerrilla organization
dedicated to the liberation of animals from
all forms of cruelty and persecution at the
hands of mankind."

After spending one year in prison, part of a
three year sentence, in 1976 Lee and
the remaining band of mercy along with some
new members formed a new movement "The
Animal Liberation Front" (ALF)

Active in thirty eight countries the ALF
operates as a leaderless resistance.

The ALF perceive themselves as a modern
Underground Railroad - the informal 19th
century network that helped slaves escape
from the U.S. to Canada - passing animals,
who have been removed from farms and laboratories
by ALF cells to sympathetic veterinarians, to
safe houses and finally to sanctuaries. Some
activists are more militant in their
approach which has lost the group some
sympathy in mainstream public opinion. The
tactics of some ALF activists are against
the ideals of the many animal rights
advocates who generally wish to tackle the
problem from a more peaceful non militant
approach.

In
the United states
in 1980: Henry Spira became the most
prominent of the new animal activists and
did much to stop animal testing for
cosmetics industry and is widely regarded as
one of the most effective animal rights
activists of the twentieth century. He was
an advocate of gradual change and introduced
the concept of "reintegrative shaming,"
which involves encouraging opponents to
change by working with them, often privately
rather than publically vilifying them only
as a last resort. In 1974 Spira founded
Animal Rights International
after he
attended a course on "Animal Liberation"
given by Peter Singer at New York
University. His first campaign against
animal testing, for which he is particularly
remembered, opposed experiments conducted by
the American Museum of Natural History in
1978 where cats were being experimented on
for sex research, he was successful in
persuading them to stop.

His greatest achievement came in
1980 when he convinced the cosmetics
company Revlon to stop the use of a
painful tests for toxicity, the
Draize test, which involved
ingredients being dripped into the
eyes of rabbits. He took out
full-page advertising in a number of
newspapers including the New York
times. The advertisement showed a
rabbit with sticking plaster over
his eyes with the caption: "How many
rabbits does Revlon blind for
beauty's sake?"

A
rabbit after undergoing the Draize test

The result was that Revlon
stopped animal testing and donated money to
set up a Center for Alternatives to Animal
testing which has worked with scientists
since 1981 to find new methods to replace
the use of laboratory animals in
experiments, reduce the number of animals
tested, and refine necessary tests to
eliminate pain and distress. Other cosmetic
companies followed suit donating money to
finding alternative methods.

Many animal rights groups have since adopted
Spira's approach, such as PETA
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
The abolitionists
though maintain that this approach to animal
rights aligns them more to animal welfarists
rather than animal rights groups.
Abolitionists maintain that such an approach
takes the movement back to its roots in
animal welfare, rather than moving toward
the paradigm shift the abolitionists want to
see, whereby humans stop seeing animals as
property, rather than as property to be
treated kindly.

In
1992 Switzerland passed an amendment
recognising animals as beings rather than as
things. Although, in 1999 the Swiss
constitution was completely rewritten.

In 1994 the Great Ape Project GAP, an
international movement, was created.

The Great Ape Project GAP

A chimpanzee is not a pet
and can not be used as an object for fun or
scientific experiment. He or she thinks, develops
affection, hates, suffers, learns and even transmits
knowledge. To sum it up, they are just like us. The
only diffrerence is that they don’t speak, but they
communicate through gestures, sounds and facial
expressions. We need to garantee their rights to
life and to liberty.
Dr. Pedro A. Ynterian, the founder of GAP Brazil and
Director of GAP International since 2006.

Founded in
1994 as a result of ideas developed in a book of the
same name, written by philosophers Paola Cavalieri
and Peter Singe, GAP is an international
organization based in Brazil of primatologists, anthropologists,
ethicists, and other experts who advocate a United
Nations Declaration of the Rights of Great Apes that
would confer basic legal rights on non-human great
apes: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and
orangutans. The rights suggested are the right to
life, the protection of individual liberty, and the
prohibition of torture.

Once
rights for apes are established GAP would demand the
release of all great apes from any form of captivity
including medical research

The project is supported by Jane Goodall and Richard
Dawkins whose articles are included in the book,
Great Ape Project, wherein the
authors argue that if Great Apes display similar
intelligence, social emotional and cognitive skills
as human beings then they deserve the same rights
and considerations. To support this the book focuses
on findings that corroborate the capacity of
great apes for intelligence and rationality, as
creatures who are self-conscious, aware of
themselves as distinct beings with a past
and a future. At the basis of these findings
are conversations with great apes in sign
language.

Below you can read the essays of two of
the contributors to the book:

Gaps in the Mind
by Richard Dawkins
In PAOLA CAVALIERI & PETER SINGER (eds.),
The Great Ape Project
New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1993, pp.
81-87

Sir,
You appeal for money to save the gorillas.
Very laudable, no doubt. But it doesn't seem
to have occurred to you that there are
thousands of human children suffering on the
very same continent of Africa. There'll be
time enough to worry about gorillas when
we've taken care of every last one of the
kiddies. Let's get our priorities right,
please!

This hypothetical letter could have been
written by almost any well-meaning person
today. In lampooning it, I don't mean to
imply that a good case could not be made for
giving human children priority. I expect it
could, and also that a good case could be
made the other way. I'm only trying to point
the finger at the automatic, unthinking
nature of the speciesist double standard. To
many people it is simply self-evident,
without any discussion, that humans are
entitled to special treatment. To see this,
consider the following variant on the same
letter:

Sir,
You appeal for money to save the gorillas.
Very laudable, no doubt. But it doesn't seem
to have occurred to you that there are
thousands of aardvarks suffering on the very
same continent of Africa. There'll be time
enough to worry about gorillas when we've
saved every last one of the aardvarks. Let's
get our priorities right, please!

This second letter could not fail to provoke
the question: What's so special about
aardvarks? A good question, and one to which
we should require a satisfactory answer
before we took the letter seriously. Yet the
first letter, I suggest, would not for most
people provoke the equivalent question:
What's so special about humans? As I said, I
don't deny that this question, unlike the
aardvark question, very probably has a
powerful answer. All that I am criticising
is an unthinking failure to realise in the
case of humans that the question even
arises.

The speciesist assumption that lurks here is
very simple. Humans are humans and gorillas
are animals. There is an unquestioned
yawning gulf between them such that the life
of a single human child is worth more than
the lives of all the gorillas in the world.
The 'worth' of an animal's life is just its
replacement cost to its owner — or, in the
case of a rare species, to humanity. But tie
the label Homo sapiens even to a tiny piece
of insensible, embryonic tissue, and its
life suddenly leaps to infinite,
uncomputable value.

This way of thinking characterises what I
want to call the discontinuous mind

Chimpanzees make love rather like humans do, but
they do not usually run the risk of contracting
syphilis. Not unless they are in a laboratory. An
image that ever haunts me is the photograph
reproduced in a Danish medical journal of the 1950s
of a pathetic little chimpanzee dying of
experimental syphilis, covered in skin lesions. I
used it in my first two animal rights leaflets of
1970.[1]

Precisely because our chimpanzee cousins overlap
more than 98 per cent of their genes with us they
have been, and continue to be, mercilessly exploited
in science. Their only protection has been their
cost.

Chimpanzees share with us tool-making and tool-using
capacities, the faculty for (non-verbal)
language,[2] a hatred of boredom, an intelligent
curiosity towards their environment, love for their
children, intense fear of attack, deep friendships,
a horror of dismemberment, a repertoire of emotions
and even the same capacity for exploitative violence
that we ourselves so often show towards them. Above
all, of course, they show basically the same neural,
behavioural and biochemical indicators of pain and
distress.

Genetic engineering involving the production of new
species of animals (sometimes containing human
genes, as in the case of the Beltsville pigs and
some cancer-prone mice) is making a nonsense of our
traditional morality, based as it is upon
speciesism. For centuries, and even today, the lay
person has attached far too much importance to
species differences, unaware that the boundaries
between species are far from impermeable. Lions and
tigers can interbreed and produce hybrids which are
themselves fertile. Species of the Primate order (of
which the human is a member) can also interbreed,
although I know of no attested case, yet, of human
interbreeding with any of the other apes: sexual
attraction across species does not seem strong and
mating could, at least in its natural form, prove
highly dangerous for the physically weaker human
partner!

Chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans, more than any
other species, are intuitively recognised as our
kin. Yet the implications of Darwinism - that
biological kinship could entail moral kinship - are
still resisted by vested interests and commercially
motivated speciesism. It is interesting that in some
instances, trading in chimpanzees for laboratory use
has been an activity selected by people with an
alleged Nazi background - speciesism, as it affects
chimpanzees, appears psychologically close to
racism.Continue reading:animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/ryder

"GAP is an international movement that aims to
defend the rights of the non-human great primates -
chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and bonobos, our
closest relatives in the animal kingdom. The main
rights are: the right to life, the protection of
individual liberty and the prohibition of torture.
GAP Project Brazil began its activities on 2000 and
nowadays has four chimpanzees sanctuaries affiliated
to it. The majority of the chimps kept in the
sanctuaries were rescued after years of mistreating
and low quality life caused by humans in circus,
zoos or entertainment activities. Nowadays GAP
Project Brazil is the headquarters of GAP Project
International."

The project has tasted success when in 1999
New Zealand banned most
experimentation on "non-human hominids."
There are however loopholes that allow for
testing if it is "in the best interests of
the non-human hominid." Peter Singer said
that the New Zealand Law
"may be a small
step forward for great apes, but it is
nevertheless historic. It's the first time
that a parliament has voted in favor of
changing the status of a group of animals so
dramatically that the animal cannot be
treated as a research tool." animallaw.info/journals/

It was hailed as a significant victory by
the The National Anti-Vivisection Society
NAVS and other animal protection groups when
the testing of cosmetics on finished
products was banned in the UK In 1998 after years of campaigning.
There were however some exceptions to the
ban including compounds that have both
cosmetic and medical uses, such as those in
the "anti-wrinkle" preparations Zyderm,
Restylane and Botox, were still bound by the
regulations requiring animal testing.

In addition to the before mentioned other contemporary
names of importance in the animal rights
movements are Tom Regan whose writings
include A case for Animal Rights and James Rachelswhowrote
the thought provoking book: Created from
Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism.
You may read more in depth information about
Tom Regan
and
James Rachelsby
clicking the links further down.

Twenty first century

In
2000, the High Court of Kerala in India
handed down an opinion that states,
"It is not only our fundamental duty to show
compassion to our animal friends, but also
to recognize and protect their rights. ...
If humans are entitled to fundamental
rights, why not animals?"

In
2002 Germany become the first European Union
country to guarantee animal rights in its
constitution, a move which could result in
the cessation of animal
experimentation by the cosmetics and
pharmaceuticals industries.
usatoday.com/news/world/2002/05/18/germany-rights.htm

Legislation banning fox hunting
may be considered as significant
progress in ending the barbaric
practice of hunting and a
contribution to the cause of animal
rights. In 2004
the hunting act was passed. The act
outlaws hunting with hounds,
although mostly associated with fox
hunting the act also includes the
hunting of deer, hares and mink.
Hunting foxes with hounds however
had been banned in Scotland two
years earlier by the Scottish
parliament. Unfortunately
there is still a very strong
pro-hunt lobby which seeks to have
the Hunting Act repealed:league.org.uk/Fox hunting

Inception of European Union
Cosmetics testing ban

With the potential to save the lives
and prevent the terrible suffering
of thousands of animals every year
the progressive ban on cosmetics
testing on animals within the
European Union commenced in 2004.The
ban is in three phases beginning
with a ban on the testing of finished cosmetics
which has been in
place since 11th September
2004 than from 11th March 2009 a ban
on the testing of the ingredients or
combinations of ingredients, with
some exceptions until alternatives
can be found with a cut off deadline
of 11th March 2013, regardless as to
whether or not such alternatives have
been developed.

The Cosmetics Directive foresees a
regulatory framework with the aim of
phasing out animal testing. It
establishes a prohibition to test
finished cosmetic products and
cosmetic ingredients on animals
(testing ban), and a prohibition to
market in the European Community,
finished cosmetic products and
ingredients included in cosmetic
products which were tested on
animals (marketing ban).

The testing ban on finished cosmetic
products applies since 11 September
2004; the testing ban on ingredients
or combination of ingredients
applies since 11 March 2009.

The marketing ban applies since 11
March 2009 for all human health
effects with the exception of
repeated-dose toxicity, reproductive
toxicity and toxicokinetics. For
these specific health effects the
marketing ban will apply step by
step as soon as alternative methods
are validated and adopted in EU
legislation with due regard to the
OECD validation process, but with a
maximum cut-off date of 10 years
after entry into force of the
Directive, i.e., 11 March 2013,
irrespective of the availability of
alternative non-animal tests.

Today sees historic ban on animal
testing for cosmetics in the
European Union

The National Anti-Vivisection
Society (NAVS) welcomes this week,
the historic ban on testing of
cosmetics products on animals.

Although many UK shoppers think that
animal testing for cosmetics is
already banned, the truth is:
animal-tested cosmetics from Europe
and elsewhere are still for sale in
our major High Street shops.

From March 11th, thousands of
animals could be spared suffering,
as it will be illegal to:

1. TEST ingredients for cosmetics on
animals anywhere in the European
Union, regardless of whether or not
there is a non-animal alternative
method available (testing on the
finished products is already banned,
but many products contain
ingredients that have still been
tested on animals)

2. SELL cosmetics in the European
Union which have been tested on
animals after this new cut-off date
of 11 March 2009 (except for certain
types of test which will also be
banned on 11 March 2013)

Cosmetics testing has been banned in
the UK since 1998, which the NAVS
hailed as a massive victory after a
long campaign. Since 2004, it has
been illegal for finished cosmetics
products to be tested on animals in
the EU when there is a validated
alternative available.

However, it has still been possible
to buy cosmetics where the
ingredients have involved animal
testing. Companies could legally put
'not tested on animals' on the
packaging as they are referring to
the finished product, not the
individual ingredients.

This is a momentous and
significant step in the progress
towards the consideration of animals
and their right not to be used in
experiments.
However there is concern that the
2013 cut off deadline will not be
met.

A ‘marketing’ ban that will ensure
no animal tested cosmetics are sold
in the EU is in jeopardy.

This marketing ban allows three
types of animal tests to be carried
out outside the EU for cosmetics
sold within the EU until March 2013.
The reason is to allow non-animal
alternative tests to be developed
and approved (‘validated’).

Now European Commission officials
are considering whether non-animal
alternatives will be ready in time
for March 2013. Already, a report by
scientists is recommending that the
ban be delayed even longer – for up
to 10 years in some cases.

Read more and sign the petition to
prevent the possibility of a five
year postponement:

February 2007 A
great leap forward in the cause of animal
rights occurred in February 2007 when the
Balearic Islands, an autonomous province of
Spain, passed the world's first legislation
that would effectively grant legal rights to
all great apes; chimpanzees orangutans,
bonobos and gorillas. In June 2008 Spanish
parliamentary committee gave its support to
a resolution to grant apes certain rights;
the rights to life, liberty and freedom from
torture, abuse and death. The passing of
this resolution will make it illegal to
conduct harmful experiments on apes, using
them in circuses or for TV advertising or
filming.

Great apes should have the right to life and
freedom, according to a resolution passed in
the Spanish parliament, in what could become
landmark legislation to enshrine human
rights for chimpanzees, gorillas,
orang-utans and bonobos.

The environmental committee in the Spanish
parliament has approved resolutions urging
the country to comply with the Great Apes
Project, founded in 1993, which argues that
"non-human hominids" should enjoy the right
to life, freedom and not to be tortured.

The project was started by the philosophers
Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri, who argued
that the ape is the closest genetic relative
to humans – that it displays emotions such
as love, fear, anxiety and jealousy – and
should be protected by similar laws.

Unfortunately In January 2008
Austria's Supreme Court ruled that
Matthew Hiasl Pan, a chimpanzee, was
not a person, after the Association
Against Animal Factories sought
personhood status for him because
his custodians went bankrupt. The
Association has appealed the ruling
to the European Court of Human
Rights. The lawyer proposing his
personhood, Eberhart Theuer, has
asked the court to appoint a legal
guardian for Matthew and to grant
him four rights: the right to life,
limited freedom of movement,
personal safety, and the right to
claim property.

During the last century many animal rights
organisations have sprung up all over the
world as the struggle to recognise the
rights of animals continues into the
twenty-first century. These groups in
include activists campaigning against
factory farming, vivisection, hunting and
other cruel sports, the use of animals in
entertainment and other abuses along with
groups that promote a change of diet and
also farm sanctuaries.

Modern day organisations concerned with
animal rights issues

Below is a selection of the many animal
rights organisations, sanctuaries,
vegetarian and vegan societies and other
organisations concerned with the humane
treatment of animals throughout the world
founded during the last two centuries.

Animal Aid

Animal Aid is a UK animal rights organisation
founded in 1977 which campaigns peacefully against
all forms of animal abuse, investigates and
exposes animal cruelty and promotes a
cruelty free lifestyleanimalaid.org.uk/

Vegetarians' International Voice for Animals

Vegetarians' International Voice for Animals
(Viva!) is a UK animal rights group founded in
1994 by Juliet Gellatle. The group promotes
vegetarianism and veganism, provides
information on how to become vegetarian and
vegan and carries out undercover
investigations to expose the abuse of
factory farmed and other forms of animal
cruelty and exploitation.viva.org.uk/

The Vegan Society

The Vegan Society founded in 1944 by Donald
Watson as its name implies promotes
veganism. The Vegan Society defines veganism
as
"...a way of living that seeks to exclude,
as far as possible and practicable, all
forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to,
animals for food, clothing and any other
purpose."vegansociety.com/

People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals

People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals (PETA) is an American animal
rights organisation founded in 1980 by
Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco, it
claims to be the largest animal
rights organisation in the world, Its
slogan is "animals are not ours to eat,
wear, experiment on, or use for
entertainment."
peta.org/

The League Against Cruel Sports

Founded in 1923 by Henry B Amos and
Ernest Bell in Godalming UK.

The League Against Cruel Sports
campaigns against all blood sports
including bull fighting, fox hunting
and hare coursing. It also campaigns
to ban the manufacture, sale and use
of snares, for the regulation of
greyhound racing and for an end to
commercial game shooting and trophy
hunting.
league.org.uk/

Uncaged

Established in 1993 by Angela
Roberts and Lynn Williamson Uncaged
are a peaceful international animal
protection group. Their main campaigns are
against animal experiments; against xenotransplantation; the global
boycott of Procter & Gamble;
positive promotion of animal rights
and for democratic action on animal
issues through the political system.
uncaged.co.uk/xeno.htm

Farm Sanctuary

Anyone dedicated to the cause of
animal rights has most surely
stumbled upon Farm Sanctuary's
website. Founded in 1986 by Gene
Baur and Lorri Houston, Farm
Sanctuary is an advocacy for animals
promoting laws and polices
supporting animal welfare protection
and vegetarian and veganism through
rescue, education and advocacy. Farm
Sanctuary houses over 800 cows,
chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys,
pigs, sheep, rabbits, and goats at a
175-acre (0.71 km2) animal sanctuary
in Watkins Glen, New York. They also
house over 400 farm animals at a
300-acre (1.2 km2) sanctuary in
Orland, California which, unlike the
New York shelter, also houses
burros.
http://www.farmsanctuary.org/

In Defense of Animals, India was
born on 31st October 1996.
Immediately the project of neutering
of street dogs was taken up. A small
beginning was made in March 1997 in
two garages of a residential colony
in a suburb of Mumbai. For three
years IDA INDIA worked in small make
shift camps. With the intervention
of the Mumbai High Court, the
Corporation handed over the premises
at Deonar to IDA INDIA on 22nd
December 1999.

The Animal
Welfare Network Nepal was
established in 2008 to increase the
effectiveness of animal welfare
organisations in Nepal. Its vision:
A cruelty free society in which all
creatures can live in peace.
http://www.awnnepal.org/

Animal Nepal
(AN), is an innovative NGO based in
Lalitpur District, Kathmandu Valley,
and run by an enthusiastic team of
volunteers, who are both local and
overseas animal welfare campaigners
and educators. AN was established as
a non-profit company in 2004 and was
registered as an NGO in 2009.
http://animalnepal.wordpress.com/

Animal rights has come along way but there
is still so very much to be done, the
progress sadly is slow. As more progress is
made and more items of interest become
available concerning the struggle to secure
rights for our fellow creatures I will
include them here.

Influential figures in the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries include:

What is
the future of animal rights, will we one day see the
end of exploitation, slavery and other abuses
towards other species. Will humanity finally wake
up to the fact that all creatures wish to live
regardless of what species to which they belong,
degree of intelligence or sentience. One day will we
finally come to realise the interconnectedness of
all beings and the moral implication of evolutionary kinship that binds us
to all creatures. I hope the time comes when finally
human beings will take the last ethical step and
grant rights to all animals without discrimination.

Below are
the expressed hopes for the future of a number of advocates
concerning the liberation of animals and the
granting
of animal rights and its implications.

Animal
Rights and the New Enlightenment

Human
beings have made moral progress, but slowly. In
Western culture, it took over two thousand years to
dismantle the ignorance, prejudice, and biases
informing the myths that legitimated inequality,
hierarchy, and inferiority as rooted somehow in
human nature or the natural scheme of things.

Western society has made rapid moral progress since
the 1960s. The student, black, brown, feminist, and
gay and lesbian movements advanced the
universalization of rights process, overcame major
barriers of prejudice, and deepened human freedom.

During this turbulent period of social strife,
riots, mass demonstrations against the U.S. war in
Vietnam, and worsening problems with poverty,
homelessness, and class inequality, Martin Luther
King formulated a vision of a “world house.” In this
cosmopolitan utopia, all peoples around the globe
would live in peace and harmony, with both their
spiritual and material needs met by the fecundity of
the modern world.

But to whatever degree this
dream might be realized, King’s world house is still
a damn slaughterhouse, because humanism doesn’t
challenge the needless confinement, torture, and
killing of billions of animals. The humanist
non-violent utopia will always remain a hypocritical
lie until so-called “enlightened” and “progressive”
human beings extend nonviolence, equality, and
rights to the animals with whom we share this
planet.

The next logical step in
human moral evolution is to embrace animal rights
and accept its profound implications. Animal rights
builds on the most progressive ethical and political
advances human beings have made in the last two
hundred years. Simply put, the argument for animal
rights states that if humans have rights, animals
have rights for the same reasons. Moral significance
lies not in our differences as species but rather
our commonalities as subjects of a life.

So,
although there are more people concerned about
animals and the environment, little progress has
been made because those who profit from animal
exploitation and the government that exists to serve
their interests have a lot to lose and are not
budging--not an inch.

But there are signs that the pendulum may, as a
general matter, be swinging back. People are
starting to realize that democracy has been hijacked
by corporate special interests. People are getting
tired of the resurgence of racism and anti-semitism.
People are getting tired of the rampant and
disempowering sexism that has pervades our culture.
People are becoming increasingly aware that our
"representatives" in Congress are nothing but pawns
of the highest bidder, and are so devoid of
integrity that they will attack "welfare mothers" as
a financial drain on an economy that spends more
money on a few new war toys than it spends on the
entire system of welfare on a yearly basis. People
want change. More and more people are becoming
concerned about matters of social justice and
nonviolence generally. Many people opposed the Gulf
War; we just were not told about them by media that
just happened to be controlled by the same
corporations that make the bombs that we dropped on
a lot of people and animals.

Change will come, sooner or later. We can only hope
that it will be sooner rather than later. We can
only hope that it will be nonviolent. We must ask
ourselves, however, whether that hope is itself
morally justifiable in light of the violence that we
have caused and tolerated to be caused by others who
claim to act on our behalf.

If the animal rights movement is to survive the
backlash of animal exploiters, and if the movement
is going to harness both its own internal energy and
the general level of political dissatisfaction, the
movement needs to re-strategize and re-organize in
light of the New World Order. Now is the time to
develop a radical--nonviolent but radical--approach
to animal rights as part of an overall program of
social justice.

The solution will not be simple, but we must make a
start. Consider the following suggestions: Extract
from Animal
Rights: The Futureby
Professor Gary L. Francione

Trying to
predict the future of the animal rights movement
involves seeing what changes have occurred in public
opinion or action thus far regarding the moral
status of animals in society. Encouragingly, a 1994
article in the Los Angeles Times observed that "In a
century and a half of activism, the animal
protection movement has transformed the national
consciousness, altering how mainstream Americans
regard other creatures" (Balzar 1993, A1). A new Los
Angeles Times poll showed that half or more
Americans surveyed oppose sport hunting and the
wearing of fur, and that scientists and
protectionists have become joined "in questioning
humanity's most deeply embedded relationship with
animals--as a source of food" (Balzar, A30).

A good
sign coming from the media was the 1994 radio
commentary by "20/20's" Hugh Downs, in which he
compared the growing realization that other animals
"share an inner world as reasonable and as sensible
as ours" to the realization which led European
Whites finally to become "morally obligated to grant
manumission to Black slaves," after centuries of
justifying human slavery with the same arguments
that are applied today to nonhuman animals. Such
thoughts give hope to those who must contend with
the flood of animal abuse reports pouring into their
offices every day

Those
of us who are of a certain age, like me, are
concerned not only with the work to save animals
right now but also with what the future holds for
the animal rights movement. And thanks to PETA's
one-of-a-kind youth outreach program, the younger
generation is adopting a compassionate lifestyle
like no other before them.

peta2is
the rockin', hip arm of PETA that reaches out to
those in the 13 to 21 age bracket to deliver serious
animal rights messages in a way that appeals to
today's youth. And it is now the largest youth
movement of any social change organization in the
world. There's always something new and fresh going
on over there. PETA makes sure that it's fun to be a
part of this group and that members will be inclined
to spread the word to other people in school and
social gatherings, including Internet contact
groups.
There's hope for the future:

I think what I'd really
like to see would be a mass consciousness raising
movement, so that we all become vegetarian, and then
I mean it would be so much easier for those us who
find it difficult to go along with that.

Richard Dawkins

From a Transcript of a conversation between Peter
Singer and Richard Dawkins:

"Peter
Singer: Richard you, perhaps you've been set up a
little in this, but in discussing things, I wanted
to try and link what I said in my session, which I
know you and I had a discussion about earlier today,
with what you've been saying, because we share a
Darwinian view of the world, and one of the claims I
made in my session is that the Darwinian view
undermines the basis for some of the distinctions we
draw between ourselves and animals, undermines the
idea that we're special because we were made in the
image of God, or that God gave us dominion over the
animals. And that if we get rid of these
preconceptions, we would take a different view of
the moral status of animals. That it would require
us to treat them in very different ways from the
idea that they're simply things for us to use as we
see fit. So I wondered if I could ask you as a
Darwinian, whether you share that view?

Richard Dawkins: That's consciousness raising, by
the way. That's a good example, it's just like what
the feminists did with consciousness raising about
sex-biased language. It is a logical implication of
the Darwinian view that there is continuity between
all species, at least theoretically continuity. I am
very fond of pointing out that it's an accident of
history that the evolutionary intermediates between
ourselves, and for example chimpanzees, or actually
between any species and any other species, it's an
accident that they happen to be extinct. If they
were not extinct, and thought experiment would be,
suppose we discovered relic populations of
Australopithecus, Lucy, in the jungles of Africa.
And relic populations of a continuous series of
intermediates from ourselves back to the common
ancestor with chimpanzees, and a continuous series
from that from chimpanzees to the common ancestor
with chimpanzees. And let's say that the series is
sufficiently continuous, so there's no reason why it
shouldn't be, that we could actually mate and
reproduce all the way along the chain. So I could
mate with a female in the jungle, who could mate
with a male, who could mate with another one and we
could link all the way in a chain, all the way to
chimpanzees.

Now, it is pure historic accident that we actually
can't do that. If only all the intermediates had
survived we could literally do that. And if that
were the case, then the only way we could maintain
our present speciesist morality, which draws an
absolute wall around homo sapiens, and distinguishes
us from every other species on the planet, the only
way we could maintain that, under the conditions of
the thought experiment that I've I have advanced,
would be to have courts exactly like the apartheid
courts in South Africa which decided whether
so-and-so would pass for white. And when you put it
like that, we all of course shrink back in horror
from such a prospect, and yet most of us accept
without question the presumption that we are a
completely unique species. Well in many ways we are
a completely unique species, but lots of other
species are that. The point I'm making with the
thought experiment is that there is a continuum.
I've thought about it, and I mentioned this to you
this morning about possibly writing a science
fiction novel in which this thought experiment is
realized, or another way to do it would be to
hybridize humans and chimpanzees to produce a
natural hybrid. And the point of the novel would be
to explore the implications.

What effect would that have on society? What effect
would that have on moral philosophy? What effect
would that have on religion? It would be dynamite.
And I would love, in some ways, not in all ways, but
in some ways I would love to see that actually done.
It shouldn't be necessary to do it in actuality,
because the thought experiment is clear. I mean,
nobody could possibly deny, unless they deny
evolution of course, but as long as we're
evolutionists, as long as we're Darwinians, nobody
could possibly deny that. Which means that all of
us, who are meat eaters, including me, are in a very
difficult moral position. We are, at least speaking
for myself, what I'm doing, is going along with the
fact that I live in a society where meat eating is
accepted as the norm. And it requires a level of
sort of a social courage, which I haven't yet
produced, to break out of that. It's a little bit
like the position which anybody, not everybody, but
many people would have been, a couple of hundreds of
years ago, over slavery, where lots of people felt
kind of morally uneasy about slavery, but went along
with it, because, I don't know, the whole economy of
the South depended upon slavery. "Of course, none of
us like the idea of slavery, but you can't seriously
contemplate doing away with it, I mean, you know,
the economy would collapse."

So, I find myself in something like that situation.
I think what I'd really like to see would be a mass
consciousness raising movement, so that we all
become vegetarian, and then I mean it would be so
much easier for those us who find it difficult to go
along with that. And quite apart from that, you'd
then have brilliant chefs making wonderful recipes
and you wouldn't have to …

"A
wonderful resource for all of us interested in
learning more about those who have spoken for the
voiceless in the past."Tom Regan,
author of The Case for Animal Rights

A website with a huge amount of information
concerning the history of animal rights, from which
some of the information included in this section of
my website was sourced. A valuable and authoritative
resource of information for anyone seriously
studying or researching the subject.

This
site is dedicated to aiding the ongoing awareness of
the public as to why and how animals in circuses
suffer. We believe that by increasing the awareness
of the plight of the animals used, it will help lead
to the end of their use.

I
am not an animal expert of any kind just your
average person who loves animals, all animals, and
feels deeply about the plight of many of our fellow
creatures. Neither am I a writer, or any other
expert. Therefore please keep in mind that the
information included in this website has been
researched to the best of my ability and any
misinformation is quite by accident but of course
possible.